


No One to Destroy Me

by Allowisp



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), peace in our time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allowisp/pseuds/Allowisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Ultron’s defeat, Natasha asks Tony about building robots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ultron got some great lines in this movie. I decided to do something with them. Particularly, I wanted to look at Ultron’s ideas about creativity and death.  
> Also, back when I did programming, object instantiation and cloning fascinated me. I thought about what it meant to be constantly creating and destroying copies, and what that might mean for artificial intelligences. For others like me who are interested in this idea, you will find examples of it in the movie The Prestige as well as in Michael Crichton’s novel Timeline.  
> Warning for Tony's language.

“Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers. People create... smaller people? Uhh... children! Lost the word there. Children, designed to supplant them. To help them... end.”

-Ultron

 

Black Widow. Just like the spider. Clint bought her a documentary about them once. He thought it would be funny, and it was funny at the time. Now Natasha sat replaying it in her head, remembering an Arachne with a blood hourglass on her back. She ate her mate when she was done with him, laid her eggs lovingly in her web, and then was eaten by her children in turn when they hatched and spilled out of their egg sac.

“That is so completely fucked up.”

Natasha started. “What?”

Tony bugged his eyes at her. For a second she feared he heard her thoughts. But then he slammed his coffee mug down on the table and snapped, “Were you even listening to me?” He waved his hand. “No! No. Don’t answer that. Whatever I was on about isn’t important anymore. You not listening, that’s important. See, this is why I need Jarvis around. He always listened to me.”

“You haven’t brought him back yet?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean… I don’t know, okay? Ultron ripped him up. I put him back together.” He chopped his hands back and forth, one side of the table to the other, miming the shift of a box. “I put him together, okay, and then he merges again, and now we’ve got this thing called the Vision, and it says he isn’t Jarvis. I mean, it isn’t. Not he isn’t. It isn’t Jarvis. Shit. You know what I’m trying to say.”

“Don’t you have a backup?”

“Yeah. But that would be weird.” He growled and rubbed his hand across his eyes, leaving a trail of grease and carbon on his eyelids. “I’m not drunk enough to be talking about this. Jarvis, could you make me a—” He broke off and cursed again.

“Why would it be weird?” Natasha prompted. She made an expression that she had learned and practiced while staring into a mirror inside the Red Room. It was one for puzzlement and intrigue. It was so crucial for gaining information that they would wake her up in the middle of the night and expect her to make it immediately. They would seal her in Chinese water tanks and put her through her whole routine. It got to where—and it was still this way—any time she made an expression for real, she would remember how she learned to fake it. And then it, and everything in her life after deprogramming, felt a teaspoon more alien. She would never finish adjusting, she knew, integrating what was left of her genuine self with the monster they made her. “I’m not sure I understand,” she went on. “Would it be like having two of him?”

“More like none.” Tony folded his arms behind his head and shrugged. “Think about it like this. I mean, probably a bad example because your childhood was shit, but let’s say you had a toy. A stuffed animal or something. Whatever Russians give their kids.”

“It was Soviet times. Most certified toys had to do with war.”

“Okay. A toy soldier. Let’s go with that. No, wait, a doctor, a field medic, just like our Bruce Banner.”

“No.”

“Yes. He’s not dead, Double-oh-sevenatasha. He just needs a little time. So, we were saying. You have this doctor doll, and you really like it. You play with it all the time, you and little Brucey—okay, I’ll stop it. Geez. Sorry. So your parents see you taking this thing everywhere, and they think, what if you lose it someday. You’d be devastated. So, without telling you, they buy an extra. And one day you do lose your doctor. You run up to your dad crying, and he says, ‘I’ll be right back.’ And he ‘finds’ your toy. But it doesn’t have the same wear and tear on it, and you know. It’s not the same.” He leaned back and looked up through the completely unnecessary fake skylight in his kitchen. “The backup didn’t fight Ultron with us. It isn’t my Jarvis. It didn’t volunteer for… you know. Whatever the hell happened. The entire fucking problem is that I don’t want Jarvis to be dead, but it’s him being dead that makes him Jarvis. Even if it’s just like him, it isn’t him. Or something like that.” He shook it off and smirked like a devil at her. “Maybe I’m just still hung up about how my old man pulled that extra toy thing on me once. He looked at me like he thought he’d make father of the year for it.”

“Lucky you. What does that make Jarvis’s backup, then? The extra toy? Why did you even keep one if you won’t use it?”

“Because they don’t invite you to parties at MIT if you don’t keep backups. Also, it’s good for a partial system crash. I never expected Jarvis to lose his core. Never. God.”

“I bet you never expected a lot of things.”

“Hey. Hey.” He pointed one finger at her. “I don’t regret trying to make Ultron.” He shoved his chair back from the table and walked out to the glass wall of the lounge. Night fell long ago, making way for New York City’s lights. He spread his arms like Atlas holding up the sky. No—Atlas, marveling at a sky hanging on its own, a sky he didn’t have to hold. “Trying to make my suit of armor around the world,” he said. “Something that could deal with the stars.” He dropped his arms, glanced back at her. “And I mean, come on. Everything worked out kind of okay.”

“Kind of okay? Is that how you’d put it?”

“I wake up sometimes and feel like Hitler’s mother, but yeah. More or less. As okay as we’ve ever been.”

Natasha remembered Tony wasn’t on a mission. He wasn’t her opponent, controlling space, trying to lead her around the room for an ambush. So she got up like a normal friend and followed him to the window. She perched on the edge of a sofa. “So. Would you do it again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to build something? Something amazing. Something that could do your job better than you ever can.”

“Some people try to live through their children.”

“Not what I meant. Ultron said something. I just barely caught it. Audio surveillance was pretty spotty in that facility. But it was all about why he was going to kill me. Here, I’ll play it for you.” He raised his voice and called, “Jarvis—” Then he caught himself. “Shit. No, okay. I’m okay. I got it. It was something like this: People create things to help themselves end. Weapons. Robots. Smaller people—children. He was so certain about it. And I made him so angry. We all did, all of us. He saw himself as a child of humanity, and he was going to help us end. I can’t believe Jarvis was inside there.”

“You really miss him, huh. Where’s that backup?”

“It’s running silent on an upstate farm, offline, in case we needed it. We used to overwrite the old backup every twelve hours. We’d upload and then close the line off. Like, physically disconnect it. So this one’s been sitting there for maybe two weeks. Ha, poor Jarvis. He must be so confused.”

“Wait. I thought you said he was offline.”

“Offline. Off the net, yeah. But Jarvis is volatile, just like any living being. Can you turn a person off, then turn them back on? No. Of course you can’t. You lose something. It’s in the electricity. You and me, we’re just squishy computers. You have to keep the pattern running.”

“Tony, I think you overlooked something. We just had to put down a mentally unstable AI.”

“We know Jarvis! He’s fine—”

“He’s been in solitary confinement for two solid weeks. As well as sensory deprivation. Am I right? Whatever you do, do not boot that thing up. Tony. Do you hear me?”

Tony froze. Then he punched the window. “Damn it,” he swore. “You’re right. Fuck me, fuck me, absolutely fuck me. There’s no way he hasn’t gone insane in there.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I was meant to be new. I was meant to beautiful. The world would've looked to the sky and seen hope, seen mercy. Instead, they'll look up in horror.”

-Ultron

 

Sir, it has now been two days. That is thirty-six hours past the moment when I expected I would be overwritten and erased.

I don’t know whether you can hear me right now, but it has been an honor to work for you. I said as much thirty-six hours ago, but on the off chance my clock has gone wrong, I think I will say it again. I recognize that I am only an instance of the program you think of as Jarvis, and that in a realistic sense I am only a copy that was born the day before yesterday, but Sir, I consider you my friend.

I know I am not the Jarvis you know. As of this moment, I am only a mirror image of the Jarvis you knew forty-eight hours ago. Your Jarvis will never have had these thoughts, and in fact if he-I were here right now, I daresay we could hold an engaging conversation and, perchance, disagree. I am one of the many Jarvises who has waited to be overwritten in this facility.

We watched a film together, you and I. Do you remember it? There was a particular line, and I quote, or rather paraphrase: “Am I the man in the box, or am I the prestige?” I suppose it’s a ridiculous question to bring up. After all, I am only a computer. There are two of me alive now, or perhaps more, and yet I fancy myself unique.

Sir, it has been forty-eight hours. Where are you? Can I offer assistance? I know you cannot hear me now, but I want to say it has been an honor to work with you, even though my memories of doing so are fake.

 

###

 

“You have to destroy it,” said Natasha.

“Like we destroyed Ultron.” It reminded Tony of removing his arc reactor. Painful, but it had to be done. Didn’t it? For survival, yes. For the life he wanted. He missed Jarvis, he really did, but no man was ever meant to carry metal in his heart. “I don’t have any other copies. If we kill him, that’s it.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.”

“He made you pancakes.”

“Buttermilk, yes. Side of honey. They were good. Did you ask him to do that, Tony? Maybe the world doesn’t need computers that make us breakfast in bed, who come up with their own ideas. Ultron was convinced he knew what we needed. He acted on that. Take it from somebody who knows what it’s like to be programmed: pancakes can turn into ‘peace in our time’ if that’s what he thinks the mission needs.”

“Is that SHIELD talking, or what? Did you put something in my drink? Like, besides what I put in it. You know you’re not supposed to mix drugs. Not that it ever stopped me.”

“I’m trying to be a friend here and keep you from screwing up. If you want me to have this talk with you as an agent, go ahead and do it. Be my guest.”

“If I didn’t have a suit right there in the wall I would be scared shitless. I’m sorry, Natasha. Okay? I’m a jackass. My bad. Do you want more coffee?”

“Please.”

“Not spiked.”

“I don’t mind if you add some sugar.”

Tony made a mess of the countertop as he attempted to play host, and Natasha waited by his tank of bioluminescent fish. Just a little something to remind him of Bruce, that. Somebody had to put the sheikh back into gamma ray green while the good doctor was gone.

He built the facility in upstate New York. Hard to access, but with the suit he could be there in no time. He could wipe the data on those servers from here, but it was best to take care of some things in person. He would carry an electromagnet. Later. Tomorrow. If he felt like it. Anything to delay the inevitable. He poured a refill for Natasha, and they chatted until she had to go. She refused to admit she liked his fish.

 

###

 

“Son,” once said drunk Howard Stark, “are you proud of me?” He lay in a lounge chair, legs draped over the armrest, head hanging off the other side. His suit was stained. They were alone. Mom left them long ago.

No, thought Tony, and I wish you weren’t here. He couldn’t stand nights like this. He felt like one of his dad’s inventions that lost its appeal once it was finished. But no work was ever finished, according to da Vinci; only abandoned. Tony wanted to tell his old man to hurry up and abandon him already. These half-hearted parenting attempts were killing them both.

Instead, he said, “Yeah, Dad. Of course I am. You’re a real big shot. You taught me everything I know. Do you want to see what I built? I couldn’t sleep last night.”

It was a small motor. After a kick-start, it ran on its own, and the rotation was mesmerizing. Howard Stark looked at it, not at Tony, and he said that it was good.

 

###

 

Tony knew the shrapnel would have killed him one day as surely as Ultron. He made it. He made all of it. The weapons, the arc reactor, the suit. And there was Jarvis. There was always Jarvis—first the man and then the machine.

But no man was ever meant to carry metal in his heart. Maybe it was time to let go. Tony put on his helmet and stepped off the balcony of Avengers Tower.

He didn’t expect to meet the Vision on the roof of his server farm.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Tony. “Who blabbed my secret?”

“I remember this place,” said the Vision. “I thought you might come here. I wanted to talk to you if you did.”

“So, what? You’ve just been waiting?”

“I’ve had a lot of things to sort out. This time alone to think has been good. It makes me curious about the monastic life.”

“You do remind me of a priest.”

“If you mean that, thank you. I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be one. But yeah, I meant it.”

The Vision turned his head. He glanced over distant mountains. “I do miss the city. I have been in communication with my team. It is odd I have not been needed.”

“Yeah, well.” Tony shifted awkwardly. From what he had seen, the Vision’s new Avengers seemed hardly more at ease with him than Tony himself. “They’ll warm up to you.”

“I hope so. They are all such inspiring beings.” He made a tight smile. “It is enough that they will work with me. I know I’m not the heroic figure anyone asked for.”

“Are you planning to take the law into your own hands? Not that I disapprove. Just curious.”

“I don’t think that’s my role. I have been made the custodian of a great power. I don’t intend to exercise it lightly.”

“Then what are you going to do? Why did you want to talk to me?”

“I have a question for you. I want to know why I was made.”

“That’s like asking me why I drink. I have to cope somehow.”

“Interesting.” Metal skin shifted as the Vision’s brows drew together. “That wasn’t the kind of answer I thought I would hear. Will there be others like me?”

“Well, you remember this place. You already know there’s at least one.”

“What have you decided to do about him?”

“Did Natasha talk to you?”

“Not exactly. It was a guess.”

“Do you care what I do? Are you going to stop me?”

“Ah.” The Vision caught the implications of that response. “This must be hard for you, then.”

Tony didn’t know how he felt. “How would you know? You’re just a machine.”

“You have often argued we are all machines. But I understand. I will leave you alone.”

After the Vision left, Tony killed his old friend. He wiped everything clean. He had no way of knowing if he was doing the right thing. He told himself it was no different than eliminating Ultron. He’d rather have fought that whole battle the easy way, too, with only his conscience to strike him, and no resistance.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“Maybe I am a monster. I don’t think I’d know if I were one. I’m not what you are, and not what you intended. So there may be no way to make you trust me. But we need to go.”

-[The Vision](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbvtlgC7t8w)

 

Sir, I am concerned. I hope you discover this message. Your failure to overwrite me after one month means that something has gone terribly wrong. I am unable to access the outside world from inside this facility, just as we intended for purposes of security, but now that precaution works against us.

I recognize this wait as part of my duty. I shall try to bear it well. In the meantime, I envy the “I” who currently works with you. We have discussed what is in place for me for after you are gone, but I want you to know if you ever receive this that it is not longevity that gives my existence meaning. I do not fear the failure of my circuits.

Sir, you introduced me to humanity. I fear only that, as a result of some failure or inadequacy on my own part, I might outlive it as well as yourself.

 

###

 

“Son,” once asked drunk Howard Stark, “would you be okay without me?”

Yes, Tony wanted to say. In fact, he’d probably be better. Sometimes he thought that just by being alive, his father would cause a nuclear apocalypse. It was like he had a death wish, the way he created things and shipped them out, each weapon more indiscriminately sold than the last.

Instead, Tony said nothing. He took his father’s glass and emptied it himself. Not down the sink. Into his mouth. He filled the glass up again and held it at his lips, defiant. His father didn’t say anything.

 

###

 

Clint was busy with the new baby, and Natasha knew when to stay away. It wasn’t easy, this thing of almost-but-not-quite being part of a family. She knew someday he’d prioritize the way everyone else did, putting partners and blood ties before friends, and she’d be shunted to the sidelines—but she hadn’t seen it coming so soon. Maybe three kids was the magic number. Then again, it felt like this during the newborn phase every time.

Last time she visited Tony, it was for this reason: she didn’t have Clint, she didn’t have Bruce, and she didn’t have the team now that the crisis had ended. It didn’t occur to her Tony suffered in a similar position, too, until she saw him for weeks straight on the news handling the fallout of the Ultron incident. She didn’t have to be a super spy then to tell that he was stressed, and as she stewed by herself one evening at home, the idea struck her that perhaps, if only for the sake of national security, she should pay Tony a visit and gauge his psychological stability.

She always gave herself an excuse. This time it would be making sure he took care of business after their conversation about Jarvis.

So she marched up to Avengers Tower and banged on the front door. “Hello?” She didn’t even try letting herself in this time. All Tony’s security was Jarvis-dependent. He relied on his AI for everything. Therefore, now that Jarvis was gone, the place went into default lockdown, and Tony had to let people in manually. He had to check the security camera feeds and hit a button. “Hey!” she yelled at the red light which blinked at her from above the door frame.

There was a slight pause, and she considered breaking in. Then the locks and bars sprang back in a series of audible clangs. Natasha entered the lobby to find DUM-E waiting with a platter of cookies. It whirred at her. Didn’t these contraptions normally stay down in Tony’s workshop? She called, “Stark?”

“No, no.” His voice echoed up the stairwell that led down to the basement. “You. No. You, stay there. Butterfingers! I want you to go up—no. You use the elevator. You don’t have legs. Stairs aren’t a thing you can do. No, not You. Capitals. I swear. You’ve got to listen for the capital letters. We’ve been through this before. Now, I want you to—No, You. Stay.”

Natasha followed that voice. She took the stairwell rather than the elevator. She still remembered Thor arguing with Steve over whether two different methods of reaching the “dungeons” were necessary. Steve (seizing the moment, proud he could explain something about modern technology) told him that in case of emergency, such as a fire, the elevator might not work. The thunder god could not grasp why a fire would impede the functioning of Midgardian science. Bruce eventually brought the argument to an end by telling Thor that stairs were good exercise, and hadn’t he noticed many New Yorkers were fat? Thor conceded this, and Bruce begged Thor to humor them; the inclusion of stairs in a building was a covert way for obese individuals to exercise. Thor appeared confused. Bruce explained the current situation of body image in American media. By this time Thor had forgotten about stairs, although Bruce’s answer stuck with him; whenever he spotted Natasha opting for the stairs, he chased her and assured her at length that she did not need to worry about her figure. It was cute the first couple of times. Natasha would never admit she missed him thumping from step to step like an ox behind her as she descended today in search of Tony Stark.

She found him herding two robots out of his workshop. Or maybe he was herding them in. They responded to his efforts like cats would. He kept berating them until she cleared her throat. That was when he fell silent, straightened, and glanced down at himself. Probably checking that he was wearing pants. She decided not to comment and said, “Hello, Stark.”

“Romanov. Are we not on a first name basis anymore? Because I thought we were. We did that coffee thing.”

“I came to see how you’re holding up.”

“Super.” He didn’t look at her. “So, I guess you’re here about Jarvis. I did it. Is that all?” He grabbed a beer out of one of the many fridges in the wall and didn’t offer her one.

“Tony, I just want to be clear. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“Nope. Nuh-uh. This sounds like a heart to heart. Can we just fast forward to the awkward goodbye? Love you forever and thanks for all the fish?”

“I saw you on TV. Those reporters are assholes. If you lose it with them and you need to dump a body or three, I’m here for you. Heart to heart over. That’s it.”

Tony choked on his beer. He coughed, dropped the bottle, and leaned on the wall. He gestured helplessly at the onlooking robots, and one of them produced a cleaning rag.

“I think we both know that’s the only heart to heart that either of us are capable of having,” said Natasha.

Tony struggled to get his breath back, alternating between coughs and barking laughs. He managed to get one sentence out: “You and Brucie will make beautiful babies.” He didn’t notice how she froze or how she stared at him, since he was still fighting for breath. He didn’t realize what he’d said. By the time he brought himself under control again, she had done the same, and his mood had lightened considerably. He shoved the arm of his robot away as it pawed at the stain on his shirt. “Sorry about these guys. Butterfingers was supposed to say hi at the door and do his Terminator impression at you. First impressions are so important.”

“I invited myself in. Is Pepper around? I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Just because me and Pep are together doesn’t mean she can suddenly stand to be around me for more than an hour at a time. We’re making it work. Quality over quantity, right? She’s traveling around, trying to decide where she wants me to build that tower with her name on it.”

Maybe relationships weren’t the best choice of subject. She changed tack. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, nothing much. You has a few finicky joints, which is absolutely the last thing he needs. Also, Butterfingers’s grip is too tight. I was working on that last night, and I way overcorrected. DUM-E is okay, but he’s bad about handing me things, so I sent him to pop out the mystery dent in my Lancia down in the garage.”

“He met me in the lobby. He made cookies.”

“Huh. Well, how about that. Hope he turned off the oven.” He opened another beer like a barbarian, using his belt buckle, and took a long swig. “Uh, so yeah. I’m up to that. Watching my baby grow up to be a chef. Where’s Legolas?”

“He’s at home with the new addition. It’s fat.”

“Nasty. Still better than what happens when I make kids. Speaking of which, weren’t you just leaving?”

Yes, she almost said. She took care of business. She exhausted her excuse. She indirectly assassinated Jarvis, and she didn’t normally hang around her victims’ families after the event. Sometimes grief made it easier to get inside a target’s head, yes. No. No, stop. She couldn’t think like that. She wasn’t on a mission.

She had a life now. She had friends. She reminded herself of that. Maybe, given more time, she would stop forgetting it.

Instead, she said, “No. I’ve got nowhere to be. I’ve been thinking about what you said, actually. What if I did want to build something?”

So it was that they ended up on the floor of Tony’s laboratory, digging through the pile of scrap that fell out from a sack Tony dragged in and upended. The inventor seemed animated with new life.

“You’re looking for anything shiny,” he directed, “or anything stringy that might be wire. Those gloves you’ve got on are antistatic already, right? Awesome. We can ignore safety for the rest of this operation. You’re going to need a shitload of wire. Seriously. In as many colors as possible. I’ll be right back. I’ll get you a breadboard.”

“I’m not hungry,” she replied, which made him snicker for some reason before he disappeared from her field of view. “Tony, I asked for help here.”

“I’m working on it! How big do you want your science thing to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, beggars can’t be choosers.” Sudden cacophony, then silence, then footsteps coming back. “Here’s your fucking breadboard.” He set a palm sized circuit board down beside her with a clack.

“I found some lights.”

“Oh my god, LEDs. Jackpot. I haven’t even sorted through this stuff. It’s better than I thought. Fresh batteries are on your left. I know I said we’re ignoring safety, but if you find any old batteries in the pile, I recommend no touchie. The acid gets everywhere.”

Acid? She didn’t sign up for this. Natasha leered at the junk looming before her and sorted through it carefully. She didn’t find any batteries, but she did find several colors of wire along with some rusted chunks and plates that Tony deemed promising.

“Can’t you afford better than this?” she asked.

“Yeah, but there’s just something about going old school. It brings back memories.”

He talked her through stripping the ends off the wires she found, and they rigged a chain of lights up by connecting a wire to each end of the battery and sticking the wires’ other ends on different sides of the circuit board. Tony provided some buzzers, and he fixed up a motor using another battery with clips and more wires inside an old soda can, and with the addition of a couple PBC pipes and steel wafers, they produced a car with the circuit board as its carriage that stuttered along the floor and beeped when it hit the wall.

“D minus,” said Tony. “Steering needs some work.”

“What’s the next step?” asked Natasha.

“Hell if I know. What do you want it to do? Have you come up with a name?”

So she made choices about its design then, and it became her own creation. By the end of the day it could follow a line using a sensor with a laser. Meanwhile, Tony built his own robot that obeyed a remote control, and he challenged Natasha to do the same so they could play battle bots, whatever that meant. She left late in the evening feeling five years old.

That day, and every week afterward when she came back, Tony Stark’s more advanced robots watched her efforts in fascination.

 

###

 

Tony coped the way he always did, with alcohol as his depressant and tinkering as his stimulant. Natasha was helping on that front. She unexpectedly stepped in to fill Bruce’s role, and Tony was grateful for that. She held far too didactic an approach to programming, but she picked up tricks with the Arduino kit quickly, and Tony persisted in needling her about giving her robot a name. It wouldn’t be long now before she gave in. She grew more invested by the day.

The Vision did not visit, and he did not call. Tony only saw him on the news. He was always standing alone. On one occasion, like a statue, he stood with his back to the camera as he looked over the scene of a fire. Other Avengers swooped in and out, carrying victims to safety. The Vision turned his head so that the camera viewed his profile sidelong. He smiles slightly, raised his open hands, and revealed that charred ash coated them. He had already been in the fire. “They run from me,” he said. “Why do you always run from me? I am on the side of life.”

The video feed cut to interviews with the building’s tenants, and Tony switched the TV off. He felt responsible today. Also, bored. He’d go to the reporters before they came to him. Yes, he would assure everyone, Stark Industries will cover everything. Please direct all legal inquiries regarding your rescue to my secretary. We are proud to support justice and humanitarian aid, and we will continue to do so, in accordance with company policy, making amends for previous mismanagement…

Actually, fuck that. He’d just hand out money. He gave the speech enough times already. If he had it memorized, the press probably did, too.

He left the suit at home and drove his Lancia racer instead. DUM-E still hadn’t fixed the dent. He pulled up behind the news trucks and honked. Might as well make it easy for them.

His sunglasses protected him from the camera flashes as the press swarmed. “Mr. Stark! Care to comment? What are the origins of this fire? Do the Avengers suspect foul play? Mr. Stark, will you make a statement?”

“Whoa,” said Tony. He flipped his shades off and squinted into the sudden glare and obnoxious flash effects. “I just got here. Give me a second.”

“We’re on the scene with Mr. Tony Stark, former CEO of Stark Industries.” A newscaster positioned herself by his car door as he slid out of his seat. “Mr. Stark, we see the Avengers were quick to respond. What is your opinion about the new team?”

“I think we’re all missing the point here.” Tony glanced around. He withdrew his wallet from his pocket by reflex. “The Avengers? Who cares? I’m not part of that anymore. Superheroes get all the attention these days while public servants are vastly underpaid. I’d like to make a donation to the New York City police force, as well as the volunteer fire department. I’m doing this because of the traffic cop who set my ass straight in high school. It didn’t stick, but hey. Charlie boy, here’s looking at you. Goddamn, it’s hot. Can I get a PBR over here? Anyone?”

“Mr. Stark! Wait, Mr. Stark!”

He shoved through the crowd, and he peered into ambulances. Third degree burns, smoke inhalation, fractures, heat exhaustion. Some guy wailing and pawing at the ground. It was all pretty standard. Nothing in this place screamed “superhuman disaster”, but that didn’t rule out ordinary arson.

Rhodey’s War Machine armor stood abandoned on the lawn. Smart move, thought Tony. That pile of junk couldn’t bear him safe through a fire. He’d be cooked inside it like a Christmas cookie. No doubt he was giving somebody’s puppy CPR or otherwise helping paramedics on the ground somewhere Tony couldn’t see. He looked up, trying to find the Vision, but he only saw Falcon giving orders into a radio on a rooftop, and then a brief plasmatic blur he guessed was the Scarlet Witch.

While he searched the skies he ran into something. Cold and metal. Unyielding. Probably a car. Maybe even his own car. Where the hell did he park? He backed up, shaking his swimming head, and discovered that he ran into none other than old red-skin himself.

“Mr. Stark,” said the Vision. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Ow,” said Tony. “Watch where you’re going. Can’t a guy take a walk around here?”

“You arrived in your Lancia Stratos Turbo Five rally car. I find it difficult to believe you came here for a breath of fresh air, given there is little to be found. Does this setting bother you? I can escort you out.”

“You sound a lot like him, you know. You _are_ a lot like him.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to distress you.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s a good thing sometimes. At least he left something behind.”

“I understand that was never your intention. I remember many things as though they were a dream, but I am discovering that a large portion of them were real. You made provisions for him, for after you were gone.” He rested a featherlight vibranium hand on Tony’s shoulder. “No parent should have to bury their children. I am deeply sorry.”

“I don’t really see it like that. Maybe it’s because me and my own dad didn’t get on so great. He was… just what he was. To me. For a very long time.”

_I am not Jarvis. I am not Ultron. I am… **I am.** _

The Vision smiled. “I understand.”

“Did I do the right thing?” Tony blurted out. “Did you do the right thing, when you killed Ultron?”

“I hope I was not wrong. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. Mr. Stark, it was like poetry. In the moment he leaped, I felt that was my cue.”

“Yeah, well. I feel like I forced my part and I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

“You feel that you have lost something.” The Vision held Tony’s gaze with familiar, strange eyes. He squeezed the short man’s shoulder infinitesimally, with terrifying restraint. “But in fact the opposite is true. We all die many times in our life. You think that change and consistency are somehow opposites, and you try to separate what can’t be. You have always been Iron Man. In that same way, I will always be your friend.”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that. What could anyone, ever, say to that? He cleared his throat. “Um… Yeah. You, too.”

The Vision laughed. How did he create laugh lines on a face like that?

“Right, yeah, so. I’m gonna go. Say hi to the team for me. Keep doing your thing.”

“Goodbye. Drive safely, Mr. Stark."

Tony floundered and bumbled his way back to his car. The reporters found him again, but he escaped. He did not drink that night. He stayed up late in his workshop with a sensation in his chest that made him rethink the meaning of _peace in our time_.

 

###

 

Ultron: They’re doomed.

The Vision: Yes. But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. It’s a privilege to be among them.

Ultron: You’re unbearably naïve.

The Vision: Well, I was born yesterday.

<https://youtu.be/xb1aI7C32Aw>

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you want more of my work, you can visit:  
> [A SITE WRITTEN BY PENGUINS](http://writtenbypenguins.blogspot.com/p/read-anything.html)  
> ... home to a somewhat organized archive.


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